The OTTO Store Experience

A showcase of what’s possible today using .NET 3.0 is the new OTTO Store that went live earlier this month. […] Despite the slick WPF user experience the site is also one of the first to utilize managed Infocards to support the provisioning experience. Otto customers can associate their account with a Otto managed card backed with the self issued card of their choice.

What makes this application really stand out from anything you could easily do on the web is that if you like a couple of products but want to see how they go together, you can drag them to a „mix and match“ icon on the bottom of the screen, and then you can dress a model with the items and see whether they go together in ensemble. I think even my daughter is going to enjoy this – it’s the online equivalent of „dress up Barbie“, even if that’s not quite what they intended.

If you’ve read ‚the long tail‘ you’ll realise what Otto are doing here. They are using a smarter UI to make their catalog more accessible to their customers so that they can sell their products further down the tail thus creating a competitive advantage in a world where shelf space isn’t limited and your preferences can be visually served up front and centre.